Nine months ago was the last night of Thanksgiving Break
by jackdeth
Summary: Nolan sends a letter to Morgan nine months after that fateful night, trying to process his emotions about all the events that happened that night and happened afterward because of that night.


Dear Morgan,

It was a hard year. Jamie and I have been together for nine months now, and we spend a lot of time together at and around UCLA. You might say we're "serious". God, I know that's an old-fashioned way of putting it. Anyway, she encouraged me to change my major to literature, so I've been working on that. I've taken some really good English classes so far. I like Ernest Hemingway and John Steinbeck and some other authors.

I want to write things that are real. Emotionally honest. I don't want to pull any punches. That's why we remember Steinbeck and Hemingway, right? Honesty. I've been taking a creative writing course that I really like. I really want to tell about what happened last Thanksgiving break, but I want to do it in a way that's not obvious. I think that's the core of really good fiction, expressing your true self with the false events you invent. (Yeah, I made up that saying myself, but I try not to put shit like that in my actual stories, that would be cheesy.)

The thing about life is it just happens. There's ideas and stories in life, but they just kind of play out. There has to be something out of place in every well-composed story, something inexplicable. I certainly live that way.

Jamie and I like to go for walks through downtown LA. They say there's a lot of crime around UCLA, but we've never seen anything serious.

That's the relatively easy part of my life. The hard part is what happened to the guys I hung out with in high school.

Alec and Anthony just finished 6 month sentences in their assault on that one guy. Word is, Alec confessed, so he's been on the outs with Anthony and the other guys from DXP. Sad to see budding friendships end over a misunderstanding.

I think prison has really affected Alec. I think he's a lot more ready to deal with reality as it really is. He expresses his emotions a lot more honestly. I think maybe he's got exciting things ahead of him.

Ryan was also prosecuted, for statutory rape. Seems like Audrey wasn't the only hot high-school chick he knew. So dumb! I don't understand what came over him. The girl got pregnant, gave birth just the other day, as a matter of fact. Ryan dropped out of college so he could pay child support.

For a while, before he had to do his time, he was hanging out with this CRAZY old lady. I think she lived with Audrey. She died, fortunately just of old age.

Patrick, I guess, is doing the best, but maybe he's doing the worst. He's had lingering back pain from that party and the last time I saw him he'd been drinking alone. He apologized a lot, explaining that if he'd known I was coming over he wouldn't have had any. I wonder about him.

I haven't been able to really write about any of that. With only nine months, I still feel like I haven't even really processed the events of that fateful 4th Sunday of November, 2007, let alone all the shit that came afterward.

I have been able to begin to understand Jamie and me. It's like it's easier to understand the things that you want to think about all the time. So I'm going to finish up this letter with a little short story I wrote, inspired by her. I think you'll see the resemblances. Maybe you can look it over on your lunch break, and smile, and think of me and her, and how you gave me a push in the right direction. I don't know where I'd be if you hadn't driven up in that yellow school bus in the middle of the night.

His name was Septic Tank Tony. Nobody knew the full story, although he had a tendency to start telling it. Possibly something distracted him every time he explained it, or possibly something distracted each of his listeners.

He had a lot of friends. He was popular. But there was one problem. Janie. Her.

Janie was everything he wanted. She was blond and skinny, which was his type, he guessed. And energetic and friendly. And she was quirky, but not too quirky. He liked quirky, as time passed.

He watched her all through high school. Somehow she wasn't ever in his crowd.

Rachel was in his crowd. Rachel hung around at every opportunity. She was a butterfly and a larva, either a laugh queen or a DP nerd. Her two personalities were like night and day. Night was her Director of Photography (DP) side. She was testy and practical. Daytime was when she was nothing but funny sayings. Sometimes she was her daytime self at nighttime.

Rachel wanted him a little.

One day Septic Tank Tony realized that he had a boob leg. He was thinking about what it would be like to feel a boob, and thought about all the parts of his own body, and realized that his own boob would not do, but his calf would work. He told Rachel about this and she said that he was deluding himself. That was her daytime self.

Septic Tank Tony watched Janie from the center of the field, as she was on the sidelines of high school social life. He couldn't get off the field. He was the center midfielder, the pitcher and the quarterback all rolled into one. She was the cheerleader, the watergirl, and the chatting fan girl all in one. It was like they were in the same places, but never in the same places places.

Originally originally, Septic Tank Tony had met Janie in middle school. In middle school, her hair was strawberry blonde, which actually now that he thinks back on it all, was her hair color by the time of this story. Janie had always seemed mysterious to him.

He thought all along that she should have taken an elective. She could have been in drama class, because everything she did had mannerisms to it. He liked how she gave so much texture to her movements.

Septic Tank Tony filmed her once. She was part of a class-project film. He kept a copy of her film, because her mannerisms were irrepressible. She played Daisy from The Great Gatsby. Somehow it worked.

He heard the news about her in the most offhand manner. He never asked about her, never elicited information about her. They didn't move in the same circles. Things would be impossible.

To be honest, despite his popularity, he was alone.

She had many male friends, all the dweebiest. She sat with them at lunch time or Oh... God... Twirled her hair with them... Or something... that's all he could see. He saw too much one day, and wanted to see more. So he followed her around with his camera. He was unwilling to enter her world, but he needed to know more, from the distance of being behind the videocamera.

One day a new kid came to school, an utter loser. Tony didn't pick on losers, or hate them, he just failed to consider them. He literally didn't know they existed. They were on his Ignore List.

Janie came up to the loser sitting on the wall after school and said, "So... You know... Like. Have you ever heard of the Ignore List? It's like when you've been living in the same area. For years. And. There's restaurants you've gone to. You know? Like Golden Panda... Do you like Golden Panda?"

"Uh... yeah, yeah I do." Replied the loser.

"I go to Golden Panda. But have you ever been to Santini's?"

"Santini's?"

"Yeah, it's this little place. It's on the same street as Golden Panda."

"Yeah, okay, I guess, I guess I have seen it. No, I guess I never went there."

"Exactly! Exactly exactly exactly! You understand! Well, that's on your Ignore List."

"Oh, okay, I get it." He smiled a shy loser smile and seemed slightly interesting.

"You're not on my Ignore List."

"Oh..."

Jean-Claude Van Damme thought Tony and other clever imprecations That's what she's like?  
But he couldn't help filming, bringing the camera back into focus.

They walked out of frame and he went home to review his quote unquote "Dailies".

Time passed. But he couldn't forget about her.

And he watched her charm nerd after nerd, unlocking their first kisses. He caught her throwing up in the bathroom once.

She was a big fan of coffee on an empty stomach.

He watched her assembling her own cadre of nerds, just as he had already assembled his cadre of photogenic high-schoolers.

He wanted to be unlocked, lured out of his hole. He was already captivated and wanted to be caught.

He tried sitting on the wall after school all alone, hangdog-like, but his friends would never leave him alone. He could never just be alone with her, and there was no link between his world and hers. It was like in the reality in which he lived she could not exist.

And then they graduated and time washed over them, "combing their hair with the waves of experience", as Rumi put it so memorably. He went off to college and she went to a different one. And he came back for Thanksgiving break, having grown up the most he ever had in any autumn in his life, at least since when he was a little kid, and mothers measured age in months.

THE END

-Sincerely, Nolan


End file.
